


Night In

by recoveringrabbit



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, SciOps Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-24
Updated: 2015-11-24
Packaged: 2018-05-03 05:22:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5278301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recoveringrabbit/pseuds/recoveringrabbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cold and wet, Jemma expects to go home to a dark flat. Happily, she has Fitz.</p><p>Or, if you need non-angsty fluff look no further, because that is literally all this is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Night In

All around her people drew their heads into their coat collars and hunched against the deluge pouring from the sky, but as Jemma dashed from the bus stop to her apartment building she found herself smiling easily in the face of the pellets the wind blew under the broad shelter of her umbrella. She loved the rain. The clean smell wafting off the streets made her nostalgic for home—never mind the fact that she loved SciOps and her life here—and an evening spent reading to the sound of the pit-patter against her window was a rare and treasured pleasure. Then she sighed, letting herself into the building with a swipe of her card. Her flat would be cold and dark, and she needed to eat something; the picture in her head was several hours away at least. Most of the time she liked living by herself, but days like this did tend to point out the situation’s flaws.

Unlocking her flat and steeling herself against the rush of dark cold air, she blinked at the light that flooded from the door instead. Had she left a light on and forgotten? That was uncharacteristic.

“Hi.”

She jumped at the voice, as familiar as her own though it was, before stepping inside to notice the pair of shabby trainers resting on the mat by her umbrella stand. His enormous golf umbrella left barely enough space for her to slide her smaller yellow one in. “I’m glad to see you’re making use of the key,” she said as she shook out her coat and hung it up.

Fitz’s disembodied voice floated up from behind the half-wall that separated her kitchen from her common room. “Didn’t want to walk the mile to mine with the rain seeping through the holes I apparently have in my shoes. Kettle’s hot if you want tea.”

As tea was what she wanted most of all, she wasted no time in taking off her boots and lining them up next to Fitz’s decrepit shoes. “Time to go shopping?” she asked, padding into the kitchenette in search of a giant cup of life’s blood. Her favorite mug already sat out on the counter, tin of tea leaves at the ready. Smiling at the sight, she turned to pull the milk from the refrigerator.

“I can buy shoes without help from you, Simmons.”

She closed the door with her foot. “Yes, but you don’t.”

“I do when necessary.”

Which was, according to him, never. Rolling her eyes, she went to the stove after the kettle and frowned, surprised to find a small, lidded pot on the burner beside it. “Fitz?”

“Oh, might want to check the quinoa. I’ve got no idea what it’s supposed to look like when it’s done.”

Lifting the lid, she wrinkled her nose and moved it off the heat immediately. “Oh, this was done a bit ago. It’s all right. We’ll be able to salvage some and garlic will cover the rest.”

“I’m fine if you want to eat it all.”

“Ugh, Fitz. Complex grains are good for you.” She ducked to peer in the oven, where three skinless chicken breasts were baking nicely. “And to think I was planning on frozen dinner.”

He sounded distracted but slightly smug. “Without me you wouldn’t eat enough to keep a bird alive.”

“Without me _you_ would eat enough to keep a blue whale alive.”

“It’s not my fault I have a fast metabolism,” he said, aggrieved.

Tea in hand, she rounded the corner to the common room and found, as she had expected, her lab partner and best friend sprawled on her sofa surrounded by a nest of blueprints, books, and papers. His backpack lay abandoned in the exact middle of the floor and she smiled to see his socks draped over the space heater she used in lieu of central heating. “No need to rub it in.” He looked up from his pad and flashed her a half-smile of a greeting. “How was your meeting?”

Groaning, he pulled his feet in to clear a space for her to sit. “Miserable. How a group of people dedicated to experimentation and innovation can be so close-minded—and _arrogant_ , Simmons, you have _no_ idea—”

“Oh, I’ve some.” She perched on the very edge of the cushion, gathering the papers scattered behind her so she could have a bit more space without disturbing his work.

“Right.” He acknowledged her point with a nod. “You should have heard Jackson going on and on about her prototype for the all-caliber magazine—not even that impressive and barely in test stage and do you know what idiot name she wants to call it?”

She carefully pyramided his books on the coffee table. “I really couldn’t guess.”

“ _Uni-mag_.” The disdain dripping from the words was rather astounding, considering it was only three syllables. Privately, she thought it made a lot more sense than some of Fitz’s more “creative” choices, but she knew better than to say so. “Honestly, sometimes I wonder about SHIELD’s recruitment standards.”

Snuggling into the corner of the sofa and tucking her feet up beside her, she cupped her mug in both hands to warm them. “Be nice, Fitz.”

“I am!” She merely raised an eyebrow and he relented—not enough to apologize, but enough to change the subject. “Our project went over well, as per usual—”

Tea sloshed over her hands as she sat up quickly. “Fitz! You told them? It isn’t ready to be—”

He shrugged without looking at her, unconcernedly dashing off an equation. “I didn’t formally present it, I only mentioned what we were toying with.”

The entire office of engineers level four and below, and he was so unconcerned? “But that’s worse. If they poach it—”

“—then ours will still be better because _you’re_ better than anyone they’re working with and _I’m_ better than them.”

“We are pretty good,” she agreed reluctantly, mind still teasing out the myriad ways things could go wrong.

“We’re the best,” he corrected. “Why that fact of all the ones you know always escapes you I don’t know.”

She hid her smile behind her mug. “It’s called modesty.”

“My way is called reality.” She was about to retort when the oven beeped and he popped to his feet. “I’m _starving_. I was about to make myself popcorn to tide me over.”

Having already commented about his eating habits once in the conversation, she contented herself with an eye roll and trailed him around the corner. “I think you ought to buy your own popcorn to keep here. I never eat it anyway.”

He scoffed, drawing on a pair of hot pads. “Simmons, you finished off the entire packet during _Who_ last week.”

“Oh, but that was _kettlecorn_. That’s different.”

He paused halfway up from the oven, dish in hand, and shook his head. “Semantics.”

She took two plates down from the cupboard and set them on the counter. “Not even! Kettlecorn is lightly sweetened with an addictive substance. I can’t help it.” Spooning quinoa onto both plates, she pointedly ignored his squawk and gave him an extra helping. “Since you neglected a green vegetable—”

“—when I made _you_ dinner, taking time away from my own important work—”

“—with food _I_ purchased—extra grains will have to do.”

“I take that multi-vitamin,” he grumbled, dishing up the chicken.

Smiling sweetly, she patted his shoulder. “And that’s a good start!”

She filled two glasses with ice water while he took the plates to the table, somehow managing to hold them in one hand while putting down the placemats she insisted on using. He was quite good with his hands, was Fitz. “Forks,” he said just as she was pulling open the silverware drawer.

“Necessary for eating, yes.”

“And—”

“Napkins, I know.” Hands full, she made her way to the table and set his utensils beside him before sliding into her seat. “I realize that even you, who eats more or less at the speed of sound, require a knife to eat baked chicken.”

He didn’t even pretend to acknowledge her pointed comment, taking up the knife and fork to begin hacking at the half-chicken he had on his plate. “How did it go after I left?”

“Oh, fine.” She sighed. “No, actually, not fine. The work went well, but as soon as you left—really, Fitz, it couldn’t have been more than ten minutes and possibly less—McCarthy oh-so-casually stopped by my station and started poking his long nose into all my petri dishes. Of course I closed the files out directly so he didn’t see anything, but honestly, Fitz, that man! I don’t know if he’s trying to get ahold of my research or my virtue.”   

“Research, definitely,” Fitz said around a cheek-full of quinoa.

Her mouth dropped open. “Well, I didn’t think it was _so_ out of the question—”

“No, no!” Waving his hands, he swallowed quickly and ended by nearly choking himself. “No, Simmons, I didn’t mean—I mean, he might be, but it would be surprising because he’s already carrying on a torrid affair with Sharif.”

“Sharif?” Her mouth dropped even further. “But I thought Sharif was with Keystone.”

Fitz’s eyebrows wiggled. “Yup.”

“Fitz!” She gasped aloud, setting her fork down to lean towards him, chin in her hand. “But Keystone’s been thinking it’s serious. In the commissary the other day—”

“Why d’you think it’s a torrid affair?”

“How do you know?”

He waved his knife airily. “In between bragging about her utterly pedestrian project, Jackson was full of the details.  She also told me some _very_ interesting information about Ordenez.”

“Ordenez from—”

“Synthetics, yes. _Apparently_ there was a big dust-up on the second floor last week and Ordenez was telling all the janitors that it was Reynolds, but really…”

She hung on every bit of information—she didn’t like to call it _gossip_ , not when it was necessary to move through life at SciOps with the least amount of interpersonal stress—and filled the times he had to chew with speculation. There was plenty to discuss, as always; the closed community of SHIELD was good for nothing if not making sure that every aspect of one’s life was open to every single person one knew. Sometimes she wondered idly if people sat over dinner and did this about her and Fitz. She always ended, though, by deciding there was nothing of interest to discuss about them. Literally all they ever did was r&d and drink tea.

Plates clean, she sighed and leaned back in her chair. “Wash or dry?”

“Dry. The soggy little grains…”

She stood to stack their plates and glasses. “Which won’t be so soggy, since they’re stuck to the pan, but since I’m proud of you for actually attempting quinoa I will accept your preference.”

Following her into the kitchen, he began rolling up his sleeves. “Mention it to my mum next time you speak to her, will you? She’s convinced I’m living off instant noodles.”

“Aren’t you?” she asked archly, turning on the water to warm up.

He shot her a frown and flicked her with the tea towel before flinging it over his shoulder. “No, but your work. We got side-tracked.”

“Oh.” She nodded, squeezing washing-up liquid onto a sponge and running it over the dishes. “Well, it’s been mostly routine today. There’s nothing particular to note. Only I’m a little concerned about the heat generated by the transition process; every time I ran the simulations today it created a bit of a reaction that I wouldn’t be comfortable with if I were a field agent.”

He accepted the newly-cleaned plate with towel-wrapped hands. “What kind?”

She explained at technical length as she washed, glancing over every so often to make sure he was following. He was of course, as always; she was surprised, actually, that he hadn’t broken in with an idea yet. But then it only took them about ten minutes to clean the dishes minus the quinoa pot, which she left to soak. Folding the towel neatly, he crossed his arms and leaned against the counter. “I might have something to help with that. If you want to look over my notes and see?”

Checking the time, she nodded. “Might as well. I’ll do it in the morning if I don’t do it now.”

As she returned to the sofa, he refilled the kettle and puttered around, waiting for it to boil. “Which of these?” she asked, both hands full of papers. “Yellow or green?”

“Yellow.” He came around the corner and peered over her shoulder. “Um, that one, and then that one, and if you look in the blue notebook, that’s what I was working on during the meeting—” He threw up both hands innocently at her scolding eyebrows “—what, like it takes the entirety of my attention to listen to those idiots?—and you’ll have to let me know if it doesn’t leave you enough space.”

She hummed agreement, diving head–first into the equations and sketches carefully inscribed in his neat scrawl. It did indeed appear to offer a potential solution to her problem; he had even suggested possible issues in marginalia for her attention. Not for the first time, she reflected what a gift it was to be working with Fitz. Days like today where they were forced by circumstance to make shift without each other only underlined the fact that doing without him was like doing without one of her thumbs: possible, but not desirable. Not that she’d ever tell him that.

“It’s pouring buckets out there.”

Her eyes flicked up to see him pulling on his socks and staring out the window. “Mmm.”

“Good for the gardens.”

“Who do you know with a garden, Fitz?”

“No one. Just something to say. I’d like a garden someday, though.”

“You’re not likely to get one on a SHIELD base.”

“I did say someday, Simmons. Someday we’ll have to leave SHIELD, yeah? And then I’d like a garden.”

She tried to imagine Fitz grubbing about in the dirt and found it easier than she had expected. For all he was so finicky about germs, he didn’t mind getting his hands dirty for a good cause. “It might be nice. But only a proper garden. Not in back of a flat somewhere.”

“No. I’d go home, if I could choose.” She looked up at him, intrigued by his sudden outpouring of deep-seated wishes, but before she could respond the kettle whistled and he started toward it. “Early enough for the good stuff?”

“Please.”

He brought her a perfectly-made cup and sat down next to her, reaching for the controller to flick on the telly. She sighed resignedly. Better he spend an hour flipping through the channels than an hour taking apart one of her appliances, but that didn’t mean she had to be pleased about it. Happily, though, he settled fairly quickly on the one public television station, which appeared to be airing a show about scientific “advancements”. Of course they were all years behind what even cadets at the Academy were doing, but she supposed the robot that could self-balance in rugged terrain was rather impressive for civilians. She returned her consideration to his varied notes, far more excited by the half-formed ideas there. Beside her, Fitz watched with half his attention and drew his own modifications with the other half.

The robot show drew to a close without either of them speaking, and Fitz was too absorbed in his schematics to bother flicking through the channels again. Not wanting to disturb the peace, she was content to let it burble along in the background. “What’s this?” she asked, holding out a carefully darkened drawing the size of a memory card.

“I’m not sure yet. But it looks cool, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” she said, and was about to say more when the television announcer uttered three magical words. Fitz’s head shot up at the exact same moment. “Hubble Space Telescope!” they said in unison, instantly abandoning their work in favor of a documentary they could, in all honestly, have probably written. For once, the facts didn’t matter; the images, both of the galaxy and the telescope itself, held them enthralled. “We should go there,” she said when it was done.

“Space?”

“Well, the observatory, at least. But space as well.” The idea grew inside and she got on her knees to face him, eyes glowing. “Think of it, Fitz! We could be astronauts!”

“No,” he said instantly, “like Bones, I prefer to stay out of endless freezing boiling vacuums. But the observatory, maybe. We’d have to become astrophysicists, but that shouldn’t be too difficult—”

“You already are a physicist, anyway—”

“—and then we’d just need a project. What should we do?”

She waved a careless hand. “Oh, anything. Whatever you like. I’m only an amateur; you’re much better at it than I am.”

His ears tinged slightly pink, he twisted his pencil between his fingers. “I wouldn’t call you an _amateur_ , exactly, but off the top of my head, then—” and he tossed off three ideas in quick succession, each brilliant and expansive and elegant. Was there _nothing_ his mind couldn’t do? Then, of course, they had to do some research to verify that nothing of the sort was being done. Then they had to look into how long it would realistically take for each of them to pick up another Ph.D. From there it was child’s play to mock up a grant proposal, and before they knew it the eleven o’clock news was on and Jemma was yawning widely enough to split her face. Fitz yelped, shaking his wrist to make sure his watch hadn’t stopped. “Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean—”

She tried and failed to cover another yawn. “No, Fitz, it’s fine. We were busy. And it’s still raining; when were you supposed to leave?”

Clambering to his feet, he reached into his back pocket. “I could have called a cab, at least, I’ve got enough money to go a mile—”

“Ugh, Fitz, don’t be ridiculous.” She held out a hand and he hauled her to a standing position. “Kip on the sofa. I’ve got an extra toothbrush.”

His smile was part teasing, mostly relieved. “Of course you do. Because you excel at preparation.”

Gathering the tea things, she tossed her retort over her shoulder on the way to the kitchen. “And you would be in a world of hurt without it.”

“True,” he said easily, “but remember who fed you tonight.”

“Again, I’ll thank _you_ to recall whose kitchen you plundered.”

He turned around and shrugged, one corner of his mouth tipping up. “So we’re mutually helpless at life. Thank God we’re good at work.”

“I don’t know,” she mused. “Between the two of us, I think we’re decent at life.”

She pulled some blankets out from her closet and hunted up the extra toothbrush, tired mind wandering. Two blankets would be fine; he ran hot anyway and would have the space heater to help. She would have to buy a new toothbrush next time she went shopping, but Fitz could use this one whenever he came. Which he did often. Not to stay the night, perhaps, but what was wrong with that? He shouldn’t have to go back to a cold and dark apartment at this hour. If it would have been miserable for her at six, it would be wretched at nearly midnight. She was glad to do this for him, as he had done it for her. A night in with Fitz wasn’t what she had planned for this evening, to be sure, but somehow it had turned into the one she had dreamed of on her way home from work: the rain pattering at the window, the reading, the peace. It had been perfect, actually. “Fitz,” she said, pausing at the door to her bedroom.

He looked up from clearing away their Hubble plans. At some point in the evening, he had loosened his tie; his hair stood up six ways from Sunday. He looked about twelve. And this was a man, Jemma thought with a warm ooze making its way through her body, who had three projects on the hop just in case he became an astrophysicist and knew what she needed before she even thought it herself. “Yeah, Simmons?”

Thank you for dinner, she had meant to say, but it didn’t seem like enough. Thank you for being my friend sounded more right, but unbearably sentimental. Anyway, he knew, didn’t he? “Good night,” she said instead, smiling with her mouth and her eyes and her whole self.

“Night.”

Her dreams that night were pleasant, though she didn’t quite remember why when she woke in the just-barely dawn chill. There had been a house, she thought, with a garden, and Fitz had been there, and it was raining, maybe? None of which was anything out of the ordinary. Pulling her robe on, she tiptoed out to the front, fully expecting Fitz to still be sacked out on the sofa. Instead the room was clear, his paperwork vanished and the blankets in a hastily folded lump on the table. Strange that he had managed to both wake before her and leave without her hearing. She would chaff him about that later.

She turned on the light and made her way into the kitchen, mind still churning over her dream. This house, now—it wasn’t one she had ever lived in, but it seemed familiar all the same, like she had been there before. When would that have been? Then she saw the note on the counter, tented next to the now-clean pot, and put the dream out of her mind.

_Simmons, rain stopped around five and I went to my apartment for a shower and shave. Had a new idea about your problem I think will work better than what we talked about last night. Also, I know what that thing is for. Be prepared to tell me everything you know about blood types and make it not disgusting—Fitz_

With that prospect, how could she not hurry down to the lab? Let other girls have their early morning texts and sloppily scrawled love notes; she would be happy forever with the promise of new projects with him. Two teas in hand and his forgotten umbrella under one arm, she swung into the lab a half-hour later with a cheery greeting. “Morning, Fitz!”

“Simmons, you have to come see this. They took some new pictures of the Horsehead Nebula. They’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” His eyes were bright with discovery and looked astoundingly blue.

And then she remembered: the cottage was in Perthshire.

**Author's Note:**

> I am not a scientist by any stretch of the imagination, so please forgive my handwaving over what, exactly, they're working on. 
> 
> I would be remiss if I did not mention that @memorizingthedigitsofpi wrote a fic for me in which the Horsehead Nebula is the _second_ most beautiful thing Fitz has ever seen, which is no doubt where that particular idea came from. You ought to read Raspberries. You really ought.


End file.
